food

Another mini review for you guys! Keep seeing this hyped up lately on the internet and I finally got to try this out with Aneeqa the other day! These are ice cream filled eclairs made in a little cart just outside the Melba at the Savoy Hotel. You pick your ice cream flavour as well as however many toppings you want, a selection of glazes as well as sauces and according to online costs £4.95 but I swear it was cheaper than that?

So the ice cream flavours range from dark chocolate, wild berries, salted caramel, pistachio and vanilla. All the eclairs are already pre-made and sat in the freezer, waiting to be picked up and glazed and topped with. We chose pistachio as the ice cream flavour, though I have to say, literally could not taste any pistachio at all lmao. The ice cream was very whatever but I guess all the toppings distracted you from the low quality of it?

As for the toppings, I really appreciated the selection and how you could have as many as you wanted. They even had a variety of colours of popping candy!!!! We chose the rose petals, pistachios, freeze dried berries and the gold coloured popping candy as well as a dark chocolate glaze, though we opted out of a sauce.

We also got a regular éclair just because, you know, wouldn’t have been fair not to. It was the Peach Melba flavour and although it was very delicious and the filling was very nice, there was very little peach melba taste to it.

Gotta say, although the pastry was decent in both eclairs, the iceclair pastry held up especially well considering it was sitting in the freezer, the flavours for both just weren’t super amazing. It just felt like overall the taste were a bit lacking?

They definitely look gorgeous and impressive though and I’m not gonna lie, deffo partially bought the eclairs just for the photos, but I doubt I will be going back to pay £5 for something lacking in taste lol.

(ALSO sidenote, probs being biased here, but I feel like both the pistachio ice cream and the choux pastry made at Chin Chin are a lot higher in quality overall than the Savoy lol…)

I finally managed to check out Bun House with VA and I am so glad we did! It’s literally 1 minute down the road from my work but I’ve never had a chance to try it out with the exception of trying a few bites of a friend’s buns. I’m always dubious about new fancy Chinese places, you all saw my initial letdown with Xu, but the fact that there are always Chinese customers seemed promising and I am so relieved I was not actually let down by it lol!

Xu is the latest Taiwanese restaurant by the founders of Bao and having just opened recently, I was very eager to try it out – so eager that I ended up going twice in two days lmao. First time I went with my mum and we had the set menu and the second time I went with VA and we ended up just ordering bits and pieces. I was very excited about coming here because there aren’t really any Taiwanese restaurants in London and also because a number of my friends had already been and loved it… I ended up having a very mixed feelings about this place though? I’m glad I went twice because I was left feeling very confused after the first time lol.

So it’s basically halfway through the year (I think?) and I’ve already been to Sketch twice so far, which is pretty good I feel like haha. As anyone who knows me knows, Sketch is my favourite place in London for afternoon tea, given its value and service and aesthetics and everything really. However, this year the price has risen from its previous more affordable ~£45 per person to a higher £58 per person. I was shocked when I went earlier this year because I didn’t realise the price increased but I don’t think it really hinders me from coming back again, as they’ve now added more things on the menu.

As well as the usual unlimited amounts of sandwiches, pastries, scones and cakes, the new addition is a little ‘egg’ and toast soldiers starter with a spoonful of caviar!! As a bougie bitch with way too expensive taste, this makes me sooo pleased because I will happily take any chance to eat caviar and this alone makes it worth the extra price increase tbh. There’s a man going around called the Caviar Man with a massive tub full of caviar, dishing out portions in cute little mother of pearl spoons, it’s truly amazing!! The egg and soldiers are delicious as well, with the egg being a little pudding thing served in a fake egg shell, made out of a comté cheese mornay for the white and an actual egg yolk for the yolk.

The sandwiches and pastries have also changed a bit too. I am SO sad they got rid of the best sandwich, which was the croque monsieur wrapped in little packages with bows. But the sandwiches now are still good and I really like the variety of the breads used in them as well.

The pastries, I think, have changed for the better and the best thing they have is the little pistachio petit choux! I think they used to have the same thing on the menu but it used to be smaller and just the one choux bun, instead of having two stacked on top of each other. I just feel like somehow this looks more impressive? And of course the warm little scones with clotted cream and fig jam are delicious but usually at this point I’ve filled up too much on sandwiches to eat a whole scone.

I’ve actually never eaten any of the cakes from the trolley they offer at the end, which is either a Victoria sponge or a fudge banana loaf, because I am always way too full and I have still not learned how to pace myself yet. But I guess that’s why I need to go *again* to actually try it out for once! Another thing I need to try out is more of the teas as well, because I still haven’t even managed to try even half of the selection that they have, but I love that you can have as many kinds of tea as you want during the meal. One tea I’d really like to mention is that their matcha is really pleasantly surprising and it’s like a proper matcha and not just a green tea!

Another thing that I love about Sketch is that the service is always really great, everyone is always really attentive and lovely, which I guess is to be expected when you’re paying so much for a meal lol. This time when I went, the scones took a while to arrive and even though we didn’t notice and none of us complained about it, they apologised about it and took the service charge off the bill! I felt like that was really lovely of them.

Has anyone else been to Sketch for afternoon tea since they’ve changed their menu? Let me know what you think in the comments please!

Just a little mini review today! Anyone who is a fan of matcha should know about Tsujiri in Soho, they’re a matcha dessert place that’s apparently 155 years old and they exist in like, over 10 countries around the world so I guess they’re a pretty big deal. I love them because they specialise in matcha flavoured things, plus they have hojicha too, which is actually my favourite tea flavour lol!! I also love fad seasonal items so I was pretty excited when I saw they had a sakura cream special range of drinks, especially because it’s pretty rare to see sakura flavoured things here.

So I ended up ordering the Sakura Cream Yuzu Tea (£5.70 size large) as well as the Hojicha Shaved Ice because I always seem to order that lol. The shaved ice is always great and never disappoints – it’s a delicious refreshing shaved ice with matcha, red bean paste, little mochi dumplings, a chestnut (my fave bit) and layers of hojicha soft serve. It never disappoints!!

The Sakura cream tea though…. it was honestly just so weird omg. The cream is like the kind of mousse topping you get at bubble tea places (what IS that topping btw? I can’t figure it out but it’s delicious and I want to know!!!) but instead of like a neutral flavoured cream it’s plum flavoured? Like a sweet, slightly tangy plum cream mousse. This was actually delicious and I loved it but then you mix it with the yuzu tea and it’s like what in the tarnation is this flavour combo? The yuzu tea alone is delicious and fruity, basically like those Korean citron teas with the preserved fruit peels in at the bottom. But the fruitiness does NOT mix well with the cream omg. It’s not like particularly bad or horrible tasting but it’s not good either? Literally the only word I can use to describe it is weird lmao. I’m so sure the cream topping would be delicious with the matcha latte or the hojicha latte cause they’re both creamy milk-based drinks, but it does not go well with the yuzu wtf.

I just really wanted to blog about this to let people know in case they’re considering this combo lmao. Everything else is delicious and I love Tsujiri but pls… don’t get the sakura cream yuzu tea haha. Especially because it was ridiculously priced at like £5 as well! Has anyone else tried? Let me know your thoughts!!

Duck & Waffle just opened up a sister site in St James so of course Emma and I had to go check it out! We are both huge fans of Duck & Waffle, but it’s not really a casual dining place, with its ridiculously strict policies and the whole having to reserve a space at peak tables, so it’s really great they opened up the Local site, which is way more casual and easier to get a table. In fact, we went on its second day and there were only like 3 other tables occupied, which was great for us haha.

Sooo very belated considering I went to Aqua Shard in February but I’ve been so bad with food posts lately! I came here with my ride or die Aneeqa to celebrate Galentine’s Day, as we had the ridiculous idea of getting breakfast and seeing the sunrise or whatever, somewhere in the Shard seemed to be the perfect place.

Finally managed to get the opportunity to visit Bob Bob Ricard, which I’ve been wanting to visit ever since I heard of them and their call for champagne buttons at each table! It’s obviously a bit fancier and more expensive than the usual restaurants I would go to but I ended up just going on a whim because I really wanted to and I’m so glad I finally did!

Although they offer a mix of European and Russian food, I went with the intention of just having the Sunday roast, but my mum and I ended up sharing a whole bottle of rosé, starters and dessert–like we had a whole three courses but I’m really pleased we went hard because it was all so delicious haha.

SO last night I ended up going to the Dumpling Shack pop up with my mum! They are dumpling (obvs) stall usually found in Broadway Market but this was a one week pop up as a way of testing the waters for a hopefully soon-to-be permanent site. I am a massive fan of shengjianbao and tickets were £35 each so I was obviously very excited about this pop up…

I recently visited Ichiryu, the new udon house from the same people that brought us Japan Centre and Shoryu Ramen, thanks to my mum notifying me about a 50% udon voucher haha. I guess it was only time that they ventured out and brought udon to London since there doesn’t seem to be a place that specialises in it. Tbh I’m not as fond of it as I am ramen, but I feel like it’s a perfect Spring/Summer meal since it’s not as heavy and rich as ramen tends to be. Click the cut to find out what I ate!!